THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 145 



circumstances which go to make up the conditions of their 

 surroundings. Yet an inferior ideal of perfection or belief 

 is far better than no belief at all. This is why it always 

 has been and always will be necessary to exaggerate religious 

 beliefs to a higher ideal than it is possible to perform, or we 

 would not strive to attain the possible. 



But it is certain that no other force than that of religion 

 could have kept alive or have preserved to the present day 

 the slightest remnants of these divine revelations, which it 

 has taken all the trials of the Glacial Period and early 

 civilisation to produce and evolve in the mind of mankind ; 

 and without which man's mind could never have attained its 

 present standard, that amongst the higher orders of the human 

 brain have now fitted us to receive a soul of wisdom, to evolve 

 which will be the duty of the coming Epoch of Charity. 

 But to evolve and develop religions, governments and Com- 

 merce, it was necessary that the Epoch of Hope should be 

 materially one of wars, strife, and greed, against which neces- 

 sary but imperfect evolutions, God is by the means of religions, 

 ever waging a still more important contest for the supremacy 

 of Love, Mercy and Justice, Honour and Charity. 



So we may truly call these seven days the epoch of 

 wars and the struggle for love, just as the first week or epoch 

 of creation and Genesis was the struggle for existence, and the 

 coming seven days are to be the struggle for the soul of 

 wisdom, the possession of which is to fit us for immortality. 

 So we find that in this manner by the nineteenth century man- 

 kind is sufficiently advanced for religion, with the help of 

 science, to remodel her teachings and so fit mankind to evolve 

 a more perfect soul in the future just the same as he has 

 evolved a mind in the past seven days whilst he was awaiting 

 the evolution of science, the daughter of religions and govern- 

 ments, to help him to evolve true wisdom during the next seven 

 days of creation, which are to be devoted to the development of 

 Peace, Use, the prevention of crime, Charity, Content, 

 Heaven and Immortality. For in just the same manner that in 

 the days of the Epoch of Hope, woman, with the help of reli- 

 gion and Christ, has been able since the days of Adam to teach 

 mankind to see and to believe the truths of revelation, and so 

 to evolve his mind, and plant the seeds of his soul, so also in 

 the future man, with the help of science and the inspirations 



